


fingers crossed

by malfoymalfoymalfoy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Arranged Marriage, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-29 01:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15061817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfoymalfoymalfoy/pseuds/malfoymalfoymalfoy
Summary: The reader is engaged to marry Thor, but when she meets his brother, Loki, things don't go precisely as planned -





	1. hand in hand

prologue

Their story isn't a fairytale, no, hadn't been foretold by the fates or whispered off a witch's lips with a spell; hadn't been a collision constellation of stars in the sky or a story scrawled in a dust bitten, leather bound book.  
Their story hadn't been a fairytale, no, not at all. Had been a bitter, bloody battle against the fates; white knuckled fists and secretly stolen hearts; had been knife in the back betrayals and a sword through the head of a god.  
Their story hadn't been a fairytale, no, but it had begun as one.  
With a promise, a proposal, a palace. 

 

chapter one. 

 

Loki is not the first thing she sees, when she finally arrives in Asgard.  
No, it is the golden crown of the palace that first catches her eye - with the magic of the Bifrost still lingering in her veins and a gasp stealing through her lungs. The grand sprawl of the palace falling upwards into the sky, a throne and a prince hidden behind it's balconies and walls that would one day - soon, soon, soon, she thinks, premonition now sharpening it's teeth - belong to her.  
No, Loki is not the first, or the second, or the third thing that she sees upon her arrival.  
It's the bruised knees of the mountains and the rushing, running blue of the sea, that she next sees, the fractured rainbow bursts of color along the bridge and knotted fingers of the golden gates passing above her head, as the carriage horses stutter, stop and still in tandem with her heart.  
Loki is, if she's keeping count, the eighteenth thing that she sees.  
And when she sees him -  
He's the second step below a throne, the second son whose name crashes throughout the room, the darkest figure amongst a collision of gold.  
He is the only thing that she sees.  
Blue, blue eyes; cheekbones that she could catch herself on, bring her hand away with blood; a sharp, straight nose and a thin, smirking mouth and a smile that is more of a ghost as he steps forward to greet her, takes her hand in his and -  
It's a moment that leaves her breathless - the whisper of this boy's lips across her knuckles, the knife turn slant of his mouth that cuts through her skin.  
Her veins bloom as she looks at him.  
Roses whose stems are broken as they wilt, again, as she hears his brother's name fracture like lightning against her ear drums.  
"Thor."  
He is the last thing that she sees.  
A large boy with a spilling smile, whose mouth scratches unpleasantly against her skin.  
A prince with golden hair and a throne in his future, who has already been promised her hand.  
"My lady," he says, and it's wrong, wrong, wrong. "It's my sincerest pleasure to make your acquaintance."  
And the ring on her finger feels terribly like a noose, like something that's grasped around her throat and stealing her breath as her eyes catch on blue over Thor's shoulder, on a mouth that is lingering, still, between a smile and a smirk, and she replies -  
"The pleasure is all mine."  
___

Loki is not sure why he is intrigued by her, only knows that he is.  
It's a calamity, he decides quickly, that's he's become enchanted, enraptured, enthralled with a girl who was meant to be his brothers.  
Until -  
Until.  
She had caught his eye over Thor's shoulder and smiled.  
It will be a mistake, he knows, one that he's already begun to make as he watches her at the celebratory feast, that night: her smile a soft, sweet thing that becomes sweeter when smudged with wine; one hand on his brother's shoulder and the other held tightly in his as he misguides her across the ballroom floor, as she subtly - nearly imperceptibly - redirects him; the silk of her dress brushing against those of her ladies in waiting and a faint pink blossoming in her cheeks, her throat bared as she tips her head back to laugh, laugh, laugh; a glance over her shoulder as she slips out of the dining hall, thinks that no one had seen.  
Loki had, though.  
It's something that he can't quite unsee.

___

The gardens beneath her balcony are a maze: all tangled rose bushes and bent elbow trees; stone pathways that curl around hedges and thickets and fountains that spit into ponds; clutching vinesu holding benches in place and column braced gazebos.  
She loses herself in them, that night, after hours of fitful, dreamless sleep.  
She leaves the sweat soaked sheets behind her and ties a robe around her waist, wanders down and through the dew wrecked leaves.  
She doesn't expect to find him, is the thing.  
Hands clasped neatly behind his back, amongst a copse of orchids, petals fallen open like lips beneath the tender touch of the moonlight.  
He doesn't turn.  
She does.  
Grasps at the silk of her robe and makes to leave, stone dragging against her bare feet, because to speak to him now would to be to throw the match that had been ignited in the throne room earlier into a mouth of kindling, would be to invite a flame. How terribly she wants to avoid being burned.  
So she makes to leave, takes a careful step back in the way that she'd come when -  
"Could you not sleep?" a voice, his voice, soft and syrupy and sticky - yes - catching her and keeping her in place.  
He's staring at her, when she turns, again. He's been made a ghost beneath the moonlight, is haunting her as he takes a measured step forward, says, "The gardens are where I come when I'm kept up at night. You're free to join me, if you'd like. This is, after all, now your home as well as mine."  
She'd like very badly to tell him that, yes, she'd like - more than is proper - to accompany him, would like to ask what it is that keeps him from sleep and would like - more than anything - to impose upon him the fact that this is not her home.  
But she doesn't tell him any of that. Only falls into step beside him as he continues to stroll through the maze that had called to her from her bedroom window, as they get lost together.  
She isn't certain, anymore, that she wants to be found.  
Not when his heart-stitched elbow knocks against hers and she feels her pulse flutter, nor when he glances sideways at her, lips still edged halfway between a smile and a smirk.  
"Are you settling in allright?" he asks.  
He's the first person to.  
And for a moment she's warring between the truth of it and a lie. The latter would be useless, she thinks, when in company with the god of lies, god of mischief.  
"Not so much, yet," she admits, quietly, a whisper that he allows to smolder in the cool evening air between them.  
"And why -" he asks, the jut of his wrist slipping out from beneath his sleeve as he holds the blushing face of a rose in his palm, "might that be? Is Asgard not to your liking?"  
Again, she thinks, to lie would be to er.  
Because it is not so much that Asgard is not to her liking, no, not when it's a kingdom of gilded towers and elaborate design, the entirety of it all taking her breath away. It's more that Asgard, like the scrape of Thor's mouth against her hand, had not quite fit.  
So, "I don't belong here," she tells him, far too earnestly.  
He stops.  
Swallows.  
She supposes that it's not something she was meant to see, that it might be something she was allowed to see: his skin cut back, his veins laid bare. He's vulnerable, she thinks, and it's an emotion that doesn't settle right.  
"You're engaged to the heir to the crown; you'll one day be the queen of Asgard. The feel of belonging will come, given time."  
It doesn't sound half as convincing ad he means it to.  
She isn't sure that she minds.  
"Do you vow it?" she murmurs, the words nearly run away with the breeze.  
That lingering smile overtakes the smirk as he turns to face her, features a lovely thing in the pale, pale night.  
"I vow it," he replies, takes her hand again and presses his mouth to it like a kiss and he might be right, she thinks.  
He might be right.  
He might be right.


	2. melting point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Loki and Reader reflect on the events from the night before and continue to form an illicit relationship, they begin to realize what they're getting themselves into.

chapter two. 

Loki knows what it is to not belong.  
Has felt the terrible, terrifying bite of it beneath his skin for as long as he can remember; that despite being the son of Odin, the brother of Thor, a boy with a crown on his head and power in his hands, he doesn't quite fit.  
It's a fear that does well to keep him awake at night.  
A fear that this girl who had so intrigued him before seemingly shares.  
He isn't certain what that means.  
Only knows that it changes things. Magnifies them. Makes him unable to look at her eyes - fractured, frightening in the low light of the hall after he's accompanied her back to her bedchambers, is bidding her goodnight at her door - and see anything besides himself.  
"I don't belong here," she'd said.  
And he'd understood.  
More than he is capable of saying.  
Because he's calculated where Thor is careless, is resourceful where he takes risks, is intelligent while he is inept and still, still he will not be king, has never been looked at by their father as anything near an equal.  
He doesn't belong.  
Neither does she.  
And it's a realization that he will not be capable of receding from; a point of no return.  
He isn't entirely certain that he wants to. 

___

She isn't sure, the morning after, whether or not things have changed.  
Because the night before had felt awfully like an affair - a stolen kiss, a lipstick stain beneath a jaw, clothes discarded across a bedroom floor - and she's been stranded unawares in the aftermath; glancing surreptitiously away to avoid meeting Loki's gaze.  
She feels as though she's been caught.  
As though she'd committed a crime: taken diamonds from the pulse of a neck or held a knife to someone's back.  
It's a potentially consequential thing that she's done; the foreboding flutter of a butterfly's wings that will incite a hurricane.  
But the pervasive guiltiness that she'd expected to wreck her upon waking that morning is a particularly underwhelming emotion when contrasted to the aching bloom beneath her skin whenever she recalls the brush of his skin against hers, the look in his eyes when he'd turn to stare at her, all of it beneath the guise of moonlight.  
It's possible, she thinks, that it may have all been a dream.  
Until -  
Until.  
She steals into the library that afternoon, like she had the garden last night, is lost this time in hedges of dusty pages, lettered spines.  
She doesn't expect to find him, again.  
But he's there, just as he had been, before - a distorted memory that they've begun to replay, as he stands before a bookshelf, hands folded neatly behind his back and she makes to turn away.  
He allows her to, this time.  
And she wonders once more if the night before had been a hazy, sweat-soaked dream.  
Until -  
Until.  
She's possessed a seat on the window ledge, is gazing down at the maze that she had wandered, dreamed, when a slip of a movement catches her eye.  
And it's him - Loki - a book in his hand and something - something vaguely like a storm looming on the horizion; dark and building and preparing to wreck, yes, to tear and turn and terrify - lurking behind his eyes.  
He doesn't say a word as he sits across from her, instead glances down at the novel in his hands.  
It's a moment fraught with tension, with a question, as they avert their gazes and she wonders, again and again and again if anything has changed. 

___

He had not meant to find her in the library, just as he had not meant to find her in the garden grove.  
But, really, she had found him.  
And she finds him again late that afternoon, when the sun is just beginning to stumble from the sky, finds him with a dagger in his hand and Thor's chest beneath the dagger, a moment that is stopped, stilled as fading golden light breaks between them and they both gasp for air.  
"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" Loki asks. He hasn't caught sight of her yet.  
Thor smiles, Loki can feel it against his fingers.  
"Probably not, no," he replies, then throws himself upward, sends Loki falling back. "But it would do you well to remember that, in the end, I always win."  
The hammer in his hand is a threat.  
Loki has never been adept at heeding those.  
There's a pulse of blood in his palm and he is no longer gripping the neck of a knife, no, now wields a weapon that offers him more distance, more control.  
Thor is the one to swing first.  
And Mjolnir kisses the sphere in Loki's hand, comes away with a metallic mouth, teeth like axe-ground sparks. Thor takes an involuntary step back; Loki knocks the sole of his boot against his chest.  
And it's a victory, this time, as Thor's palms punch the pavement and the hammer hits the ground by his feet. Loki had won this fight, he had, is standing above his brother with adrenaline tangled in his lungs and a low, lurking anger firing like a gun in his nerves.  
He glances back and -  
She's there.  
Her eyes on his.  
Her mouth tilted in a small, subdued smile that he recognizes as solely for him.  
He'd won, before, and he's won, again, as he meets her gaze, turns his mouth so that it matches hers.  
His heartbeat stalls. 

___

She'd made a habit of pinching herself, when she was younger, in order to discern whether or not she was knee deep in a dream.  
The bite of nails against skin had always served to jolt her out of any reverie, had always drawn blood and coaxed her awake and it doesn't work, now - not if she is, in fact, still strewn about in sweat soaked silk sheets, her eyes closed and her pulse steady - not if she isn't gripping a palm around a stone baulstrade, the wind running through her skirts as the afternoon sun drenches the world in a deliriously yellow hue, watching as Loki stands in the aftermath of his spar with Thor, breath hitching as he glances back, sees her and sees her and sees the smile flirting at the edges of her mouth and closes his mouth, takes a step back from the wide grin that had accompanied his victory and allows her something that is closer, that resonates like a heartbeat, like a sledgehammer slammed between her ribs, something that falls into place with her memory of the garden - that smile that had been something else, yes -  
It had not been a dream.  
And she doesn't realize until she's returned to her bed chamber that night, until she finds a golden filigree book slid beneath her door, until she recalls that it's the book that Loki had been reading previously, that it hadn't been a dream and -  
Everything has changed. 

___

She isn't shocked, when she finds him in the gardens that night, isn't surprised. She'd surmised what the book left in her chambers had meant, had supposed that she would find him here, again.  
She isn't lost.  
He'd meant to be found.  
And he's the one to turn, this time, an amalgamation of the boy that she'd seen with his hand around the cheeks of a rose, the boy who had sat silently across from her in the library, the boy who had stood victoriously above his brother.  
"Forgive my supposition," he says, gestures towards the book in her hands. "I thought you might enjoy it. It's a sight better than what you were reading, earlier."  
It's a terribly easy thing, a terribly dangerous thing, to take a step towards him.  
To nod.  
To grin. 

___

Loki had never meant for things to progress this far.  
When it began - the arrival of a princess, his heart in his throat and his mouth on her hand - his thoughts of her had been fleeting. An open handed fantasy of kisses being stolen from a pretty girl, from his brother.  
But then, things had changed - roses in her cheeks and his elbow knocking hers, the garden blooming around them - he'd gotten tangled in his want: to touch her, to talk to her, to take and take and -  
He should never have let it get so far - her smile over his shoulder and his book in her hands - but it had and it had and -  
Loki is in trouble.


	3. behind the bit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As feelings begin to develop, there really only seems to be one choice: to run.

chapter three.

She realizes it too late, that she's in too far; realizes it only once Loki accompanies her back to her rooms that night and, at the chance of the brush of their hands, she pulls away as though she's been burned.  
Because there had been a matchstrike beneath her skin, a forest fire.  
Because she's to marry Thor and has not once felt for him what she does for Loki.  
And the inevitability of that - of what it will do and what it will mean and what it might cost - it scares her.  
So -  
She does the only thing she can think to do.  
She runs. 

___

Loki finds her in the stables, largely by coincidence.  
And it occurs to him that this - their continual running into each other - must mean something. Must be an omen ordained by the fates, even greater than the word of the Allfather, that ring on her hand.  
It's a thought that he is quick to suppress.  
Focuses, instead, on the hooded cloak that he's faintly certain she doesn't wear with regularity, on the strained-strap of the saddle bag that is pecularily overfull, on the hasty, harried jerk of her movements as she tightens the girth.  
She startles when she catches sight of him.  
"Going for a ride?" he asks, takes a measured step forward and watches as she takes an according step back.  
"It's a lovely day for one, don't you think? Wouldn't want to let it go to waste." Her words run from her mouth, trip over her teeth. She's frenetic. Kinetic. A source of energy that is vastly different from that which she had been last night.  
"Possibly," he replies. He isn't sure whether or not he wants to catch her in her lie. "There are, however, storm clouds on the horizon. Should you not wait for another day?"  
"No." She says it far too quickly. "No, I think I'd prefer to go today."  
She is not willing to admit, yet, just what it is that she plans to do.  
And Loki could let her go, ostensibly, could watch her back recede and wait for the realization that she's gone. Could be sensible and could be safe but he's never really been one for either of those things.  
He'd much rather play into her game.  
"I think I'll go with you then," he tells her, makes a move towards his stallion's stall and observes with a sick satisfaction the panic that flutters across her face. "You're right about the day; better to take advantage of the weather."  
She struggles for a smile. It doesn't fit right against her mouth, looks awfully like the expression that she's become unknowingly accustomed to allowing his brother. His breath is strangled in his throat.  
"That's hardly necessary -"  
"Is it?" He grasps the wood of the stall door nearest him. "I'll wager that you need protection, considering that you'll be riding to the border."  
She's been caught.  
She realizes that, now.  
And he isn't sure how that changes things, only knows that it does.  
There's a frisson of tension between them, a flint waiting for the friction it needs to ignite.  
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she says, tries once more for a lie.  
He gestures towards her horse, wants very badly to take a step closer and tilt her mouth into the same sort of smile that it had been the night before. "Quite overprepared for a simple hack in the woods, aren't you?"  
The words fall with the same impact that the ones before had.  
And he discerns the visible hitch of her breath, the reconfiguring of her features as another palpable change, a different game to play.  
"It never hurts to overprepare."  
He nods in agreement. Steps close and then closer, till all he can see is the startling color of her eyes.  
"It only hurts when that preparedness can be misconstrued as treason." The word wrestles itself out of his mouth. He wants to stop, to step back, but it's too late now, it's been too late since that first moment, the fall of a breath that began a hurricane. "Breaking an alliance, fleeing from the king. Why in Odin's name would you run away?"  
He knows precisely why.  
Knows that it is the preferable option.  
But he also knows that he cannot allow her to leave.  
So -  
"Well, if you're intent on this running away business than far be it from me to stop you. However, I think I shall accompany you to the border, to ensure your safety. It would calamitous should the future princess of Asgard be found dead in the woods."  
His words betray a plan.  
A proposition.  
A proposal, of sorts.  
"And why would you do that?" she asks. "Aid an enemy of the crown."  
His answering smile is dangerous, sharp, draw blood from her ear as he leans forward, murmurs, " I think we both know that you're not the only enemy of the crown, here. Really, what do I have to lose?"  
It's a question that he should have known better to ask.  
Because by going with her, by luring her back, he will be risking everything.  
It's a risk that he's willing to take.

___

She should not have let him come.  
It was a mistake and it was a misstep and it will only serve to make things harder, in the end.  
He's going to try and convince her to return.  
He isn't going to succeed.  
But they're knee-deep in the twisted oak and tall grass of the forest beyond the palace when something - large and black and antlered, a beast that she can't seem to name but that terrifies her mare regardless - flickers in the underbrush.  
The moment is too quick for her to catch. To stop.  
Her mare rears.  
She falls.  
The impact of it doesn't quite register. Not till her palms are bloody on the ground and she hears her name rip itself from Loki's throat; not till she feels his hand on her waist and a distinctly worrying, biting pain.  
"Are you allright?" he gasps.  
She isn't sure.  
The fact of the fall still seems distant.  
She feels Loki's fingers ghost across her ribs, drift down her legs, stop at the jut of her ankle.  
"Does it hurt?" he asks. She doesn't need to answer. His skin brushes against hers; she feels the adrenaline rush of magic in her veins. "Broken," he says. "You'll need to stay off it for a few days, even with my assistance."  
Her heart is caught in her chest.  
She's just begun to grasp what he means: there will be no escape, this afternoon.  
Panic wreaks havoc beneath her skin.  
"Here," Loki murmurs, an arm slipped beneath her knees. "Around my neck, now. I'll carry you back to my horse, then we can return to the palace. You'll be able to receive more proper treatment there."  
"No -" she says, urgent and unsure and unsettled. Because she can't return to the palace, can't marry Thor, can't lock an arm around his neck and entrench herself further. She can't, she can't, she can't. "Loki -"  
It's the first time that she's said his name. Felt the letters slip from her tongue and the syllables knock against her teeth. It's a word that she'd like to say again, if only to feel his fingers grip around her wrist.  
"If you'd like to run you can very well do it another day," he replies hastily. "The wedding won't be for months. But I'm not going to let you go whilst you're hurt."  
"Loki -"  
It's difficult to make the word sound harsh, to say it as anything but a hopeless sort of sigh.  
"Unfortunately, this is non-negotiable," he tells her, lifts her, and she's lost, she's found, she's dizzy with the dragging sort of pain that accompanies every breath and she is, she isn't -  
All she can feel is Loki's heartbeat against her side.

___

He'd been there when her eyes had fluttered shut - pain, pain, pain searing through her abdomen, licked by the magic lingering in his fingertips; his arms around her waist, his hips against hers, his breath on her neck - and he's there when she wakes up - the pain a dull, aching thing now; his eyes on her as he sits beside her bed, a book in his hands and moonlight slipping through the window, stealing to the parts of the room untouched by the lamp-light.  
He startles, when he sees that she's awake. Reaches out as if to touch her but then thinks better of it.  
"How are you feeling?" he asks and she can hear the worn-out concern threaded thickly through his voice.  
"Better," she replies, settles her hand across her ribs and thinks that she can feel the ridges of fault lines jammed back together. "Thanks in large to your assistance, I'm assuming?"  
He smiles. A close-mouthed, tight lipped thing that communicates as a private joke, something whispered in her ear.  
"I helped, yes. But it was more difficult explaining to Odin why you rode back to the castle with fractured ribs and a broken ankle with me."  
Panic sears like a lightening strike through her chest.  
"I told him that I stumbled upon you in the woods, of course. Managed to explain the whole thing away. Quite fortuitous, how it all happened."  
And it had been, yes, because he'd brought her back, had a simple story to tell, looked like a good brother and a kind man and a hero, maybe, and it had all happened as though precisely according to plan.  
It's a thought that had not occurred to her, in the hazy midst of the shock and the pain.  
"Did you orchestrate this?" she asks, plainly.  
Loki's expression does not change. Is still markedly difficult to discern, save for the sublte, soft-edged smile. "My plan for your return was a sight less dramatic than all this," he tells her, fingers swaying against book pages. "And involved significantlyless broken bones."  
The configuration of his features shifts, then, become sharper as he leans forward , says, "I would never have hurt you."  
And she knows, she knows.  
But -  
"Why wouldn't you just let me go?" she asks, words more quiet and more quivering than she'd meant for them to be.  
He closes the book. Glances away from her. She wants desperately to reach out and touch him.  
"I don't think that's a question I should answer," he says.  
And they both know the answer, both know that foolishness lies at the heart of it, both know that they've only sealed a fate that they hadn't wanted to run toward, before.  
"I think," he murmurs, moving ever so slightly close to her, "that it would be best for you to get more sleep. Here -"  
He reaches behind her, adjusts the array of pillows situated on her bed. And he's so impossibly close; she can feel the heat of his hands, can see the hitch of his chest with every breath, can and can and -  
She presses her fingers to his throat.  
Feels a pulse, feels him swallow.  
"I was afraid," she admits. She still is. "I thought that I could outrun what I've begun to feel for you, what I suspect I won't ever feel for your brother."  
It's a terrible truth to tell.  
And Loki looks down, away, presses his fingers against hers and says, before pulling away, "I read to you, while you were asleep. The novel that I left in your chambers the other night. It's one of my favorite books."  
He draws away, then, sits beside her bed once more and opens the dust-mottled, ink-stained pages.  
"Sleep," he murmurs, and his fingers pass over her hand.  
Then he begins to read.


	4. in bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the incident in the woods, the reader has a question and a request for Loki.

chapter four. 

Loki is gone, when she wakes.  
Blue, hazy morning air in the seat that he'd occupied beside her bed; a note atop the book that he'd stowed beneath her door, read in order to lull her to sleep; thin, neat handwriting telling her to meet him at their place in the gardens today.  
And it's that word - their - that makes her heart stop and her pulse stutter. Because this - their - is what she'd been afraid of, what she'd been running from; what she'd been longing for as she drifted asleep to the soothing, soft sound of his voice.  
There's something between them.  
She isn't sure she wants to know what.  
But she finds him again in the vine-ravaged alcove where they'd stumbled upon each other that first night, where he had been then like he is now, waiting for her.  
"Loki," she says, for the third time, and is no less shocked, surprised at the way it fits in her mouth.  
He turns.  
And the smile that he offers her - she suspects that it's involuntary, a knee-jerk reaction that she can't help but reciprocate.  
He says her name before glancing away - softly, reverently, as though he fears this instance might be overheard, might be the last. Then, "I wanted to ensure that you were allright. My being in your chambers for an extended amount of time would not have appeared -" he pauses. Smirks. "Proper."  
His reasoning for their meeting, she thinks, is a lie.  
One that she doesn't mind so long as it continues.  
He's desperately, devastatingly pretty beneath the gaze of the sunlight; features humbled like the petals of a rose. She isn't afraid that she might be cut.  
He begins to walk and she falls into step beside him, wishes to discuss this time something different from the book that he'd read, something that will ensure the continuation of the lie.  
"It was magic that you used yesterday, was it not?" she asks, is already aware of the answer; because she had felt more, yesterday, than the brush of his fingertips against skin, had felt a dizzying rush of something - something - that she couldn't quite name or place but thought felt faintly like alcohol on the back of her teeth, had felt magic, when he touched her, broken bones set hastily in reverse.  
He nods.  
"And magic, can you - that is, would it be possible -"  
The words are evasive, manage to struggle from her grasp till he stops her with his fingers against her wrist.  
"Say it," he says.  
He's something golden beneath the sun. Features taken to with a carving knife. He's Midas, and she's ruined with his touch.  
"Could you teach me?" she asks. "Magic?"  
His brows draw together. "Magic?" he repeats; carefully, curiously. "Why would you want to learn that?"  
"Well it would useful, don't you think, for me to have a way to protect myself, should I ever be in need of it."  
And this is not why she wants to learn, no, but his features stiffen, never the less.  
"If you're in fear of your safety why not ask my brother to teach you how to wield a blade? Most would argue that use of a weapon is infinitely more practical than having any sort of a grasp on magic -" his lip curls. "On sorcery, parlor tricks."  
They aren't discussing magic, anymore.  
"It takes little skill to hurl a hammer, does it not?" She asks, watches as the curve of his lip softens into a smile.  
He begins to walk again, and it's only then that she realizes he's relinquished his hold on her wrist - the skin now startlingly, sorrowfully bare. She hastens to catch up with him. He's pensive, when she does, is pondering, on the precipice of a question that she suspects will have little to do with what she'd initially asked.  
"You fawn not over my brother. Why?" he asks. She can see, behind his back, his thumb rubbing at his opposite forefinger in time to his pulse. A measured, methodical movement that makes her wonder at it's purpose.  
She glances over at him, allows a smile. "You're his brother, surely you should understand my reasoning for that better than anyone."  
He laughs - low and lurking and lovely; a breathless sound that she wants to hear again and again and again.  
"He's brash and arrogant and rude. He only talks of his conquests in war. I'm not enirely certain he knows how to read."  
Another laugh is bitten back.  
"No," he agrees, "I'm not sure he can."  
"You, though -" she begins, breaks off.  
Laughter lingers in the sultry summer air, everything painted a golden yellow hue as they walk amidst the hedges and the fountains and the roses just beginning to bloom.  
And she wants to tell him that he is far more clever than his brother, perhaps more than anyone she's met; that he's patient and calculated and kind; that there had been a reason she'd wanted to run from this - from them, from the tender words caught in her throat.  
But to say that would be to commit some terrible crime.  
It would be something that she could not take back.  
So she says, instead, "I'd very much like to learn magic from you."  
The edges of Loki's mouth slip into a poorly disguised smile. 

___

It is a dangerous, dastardly thing to set the spell book beside her door.  
Loki is not certain he cares, anymore.  
He's too far gone to be able to reign in his emotions, to reverse what has now been done.  
Because he likes this girl, in a way that he hasn't quite liked anyone before. And that - the sudden awareness of his own heart, it's symphony sweet in his ears as he brushes his fingers along the door that he can guess she's situated somewhere behind - it is going to be the beginning and the end of everything.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! this fic will be updated weekly!


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